The Insider Report from The New American

Congress Opens MKUltra Files, Asks About Jack Ruby

On June 30, the U.S. House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets convened a landmark hearing titled “Mind Control and Accountability: Uncovering the Truth of the CIA’s MKULTRA Project,” chaired by Florida Republican Anna Paulina Luna. Testimony emerged connecting the Central Intelligence Agency’s most notorious secret program to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination — specifically to Jack Ruby, the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald before he could testify.

MKUltra was a CIA program running from 1953 to 1973 that studied mind control and the alteration of human behavior, using unwitting subjects who were given high doses of psychoactive drugs and subjected to forms of psychological torture such as electroshock, sensory deprivation, and isolation. The program involved more than 80 institutions, including schools, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies. The CIA destroyed all MKUltra operational files in 1973, but the discovery of surviving financial files sparked a round of Senate hearings in 1977.

At the hearing last month, the most significant testimony came from investigative journalist Tom O’Neill, author of Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties. He documented connections between MKUltra and Ruby.

In April 1964, after Ruby was convicted and sentenced to death for killing Oswald, Dr. Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West, a CIA-connected psychiatrist, examined Ruby on behalf of his new defense attorney. West continued to treat Ruby until shortly before Ruby’s death in 1967.

In June 1964, Chief Justice Earl Warren and others from the Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy visited Ruby to take his sworn testimony, but Ruby was babbling incoherently. Some wonder if West’s visits influenced or manipulated Ruby so he was unfit to testify. Commission Counsel Arlen Specter recounted in his memoir that Ruby pulled him and Warren aside to whisper that “they’re cutting off the arms and legs of Jewish children in Albuquerque and New Mexico.”

O’Neill told Luna’s committee he discovered a 1953 letter from West to CIA MKUltra director Dr. Sidney Gottlieb. It described planned experiments on unwitting subjects at Lackland Air Force Base, including “basic airmen,” “prisoners in the local stockade,” and psychiatric patients with dissociative disorders. O’Neill described the letter as reading “like a page torn from the research notebook of Josef Mengele,” in reference to the Nazi “Angel of Death,” infamous for his horrific medical experiments on Auschwitz prisoners.

Crucially, O’Neill noted that former CIA Director Allen Dulles, who authorized MKUltra, sat on the Warren Commission, while Richard Helms, who oversaw MKUltra and later ordered its records destroyed, served as the CIA’s liaison to the same commission. Both men knew Jolly West and his methods, yet neither disclosed West’s relationship with the agency.

Two witnesses warned Congress that MKUltra may not have ended in 1973. Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow at Brown University, testified: “There have been enormous advances in cyber technology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. Covert agencies may have access to tools for mind control that Sidney Gottlieb could not have imagined.” O’Neill added: “Is it happening today? Did it continue? I don’t know. I can’t imagine that it didn’t, though, because the technology that they worked to establish over 20 to 25 years and spent more money on than any operation the CIA conducted was successful.”

Democrats boycotted the hearing, sending only one minority witness — a former National Institutes of Health (NIH) researcher, Dr. Elizabeth Ginexi, who argued that current NIH reforms represented “political control” replacing “scientific judgment.”

Luna stated that additional MKUltra documents are currently in the process of being declassified as part of an ongoing push for transparency, and that she is following up with the CIA to demand the full release of MKUltra records. Afterward, Luna posted on X: “According to today’s expert witnesses: Jack Ruby and Charles Manson were MKUltra assets.” — Rebecca Terrell

U.S. Declines to Extend USMCA, Initiating Negotiations With Canada and Mexico

The United States has formally declined to extend the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), setting off a series of negotiations with Canada and Mexico to reach a revised agreement.

In a statement on July 1, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced that “the United States, Mexico, and Canada met virtually today to discuss the operation of the USMCA,” as required under Article 34.7, Section 2 of the agreement.

He continued:

The United States did not agree to renew the USMCA in its current form. As a result, the USMCA is not renewed. The United States will continue to engage with Mexico and Canada to address the Agreement’s shortcomings and our trade deficits with these countries. However, the Agreement remains in force pending resolution of these issues or until the Agreement’s termination. As previously announced, the United States will meet with Mexico the week of July 20 for a third round of bilateral negotiations related to the USMCA joint review.

In a July 2 interview on Fox News, Greer noted that by not renewing the USMCA, “nothing changes today. It’s not like it’s a cliff. Trade continues. It just continues on better terms for America.”

Article 34.7, Section 4 of the USMCA stipulates that if a country declines to extend the agreement, “the [USMCA] Commission shall meet to conduct a joint review every year for the remainder of the term of this Agreement.” This period would last for 10 years — in this case, until 2036 — either until the USMCA expires or until all three countries agree to a revised agreement with a 16-year term.

As Greer noted in his statement, the United States and Mexico are scheduled to hold bilateral negotiations during the week of July 20 in Mexico City. Further meetings will likely be scheduled.

As The New American previously reported, U.S. President Donald Trump had indicated that he would not agree to a clean USMCA extension. Additionally, Greer had floated potentially withdrawing the United States from the agreement, while Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said that “it needs to be reconsidered for the benefit of America.”

The New American has noted repeatedly that the USMCA, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2020, is a major step toward a full-blown North American Union. Although the Trump administration’s decision not to accept a clean renewal is an opportunity to restore U.S. sovereignty by getting us out of the USMCA, there is no guarantee of this. Over the 10-year period of annual reviews, either the Trump administration or a future administration could agree to a revised agreement that further integrates the United States into a North American regional body. Statements by U.S. officials have indicated that the Trump administration is more inclined to seek a revised agreement rather than full withdrawal.

Instead of trying to renegotiate the USMCA, the Trump administration must withdraw the United States from it entirely — and Congress must act by introducing and enacting legislation to that effect. Urge your U.S. representative and senators to protect U.S. sovereignty by getting out of the USMCA and other international agreements. — Peter Rykowski

Legacy Media Triggered Over Trump Admin’s Shot at Gun Regulations

The Trump administration is triggering hysteria in legacy media ranks over its agenda to relax gun rules.

They’re rolling back a “tsunami” of gun regulations, Axios announced over the weekend, adding that “the effect critics fear is more guns moving with less federal scrutiny.”

The New York Times told readers on Sunday, “Trump Administration Rolls Back Dozens of Gun Regulations.” The Times leads with this opening:

The Trump administration is scrapping more than three dozen firearms regulations, abandoning a crackdown on illegal sales, restoring gun rights to some people with mental illness and loosening oversight of private weapons transactions.

These rollbacks would reportedly “let Americans ship handguns in the mail, gut Biden-era background check rules and make it harder to yank a gun dealer’s license.”

A few of these regulatory changes or proposals have been in motion for some time during Trump’s second term. Back in April, the ATF announced changes that would “reduce burdens on law-abiding gun owners and businesses.” An ATF spokesperson said the point was to shift focus to “willful violators and criminal actors, not inadvertent compliance issues by responsible owners and licensees.” The changes include streamlining rules and regulations on forms to make it easier on gun dealers and owners, and a ban reversal on “non-lethal training ammunition and dual-use barrels.” You can read more about the changes here.

Some of the changes are simply reversals of Biden-era rules.

A spokesperson from the anti-gun organization Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence bemoaned the policy shifts. It “takes us back 100 years,” Kris Brown told the Times. “It’s really decimating A.T.F.’s ability to regulate this industry.… This is, to us, absolutely the gun industry’s wish list.”

That might be true (who says that’s a bad thing?), but it’s also clearing up time and resources for the ATF to better pursue real criminals. According to a press release from last week, the ATF, in its own words, “has recorded significant results since shifting its enforcement priorities in 2025 to refocus on violent crime, transnational criminal organizations, and illegal pipelines supplying them firearms.” In 2025, the ATF

saw substantial increases in criminal referrals and charges compared to 2024. Referrals to the Department of Justice rose sharply across the six firearms‑related statutes, including straw purchasing, which increased 182%; trafficking, which rose 129%; and false statements under [U.S. law], which increased 135%. Overall, referrals across all six trafficking statutes climbed from 155% year over year. Criminal charges followed a similar trend, with charges across all six trafficking statutes increasing 57% year over year. Roughly a quarter of all ATF-initiated violent crime cases involve investigating firearms trafficking to Mexico.

As for the part about loosening gun ownership rules for the supposedly mentally ill, that’s referring to proposed ATF rules that aim to change the definition of who is legally classified as mentally unfit to own firearms.

The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) bans anyone “who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution” from possessing firearms or ammunition. It also prohibits people from selling or giving a firearm to someone they believe “has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution at 16 years of age or older.” The government lists in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) who those people are.

The criteria for who is mentally defective includes someone who is a danger to himself, can’t manage his own affairs, or has been found insane by a court. In its enforcement definition, the ATF included definitions from the Veterans Affairs department, which states a “mentally incompetent person is one who because of injury or disease lacks the mental capacity to contract or to manage his or her own affairs, including disbursement of funds without limitation.” So, the ATF added to its list of banned people those whom the VA said were bad at managing their finances.

The ATF says that its definition of who may not have a gun has been, for decades, too broad. “ATF believes its current regulation defining ‘adjudicated as a mental defective’ is overbroad because it encompasses individuals who do not suffer from the kinds of mental disabilities that fell within the term ‘mental defective,’” says the ATF. Moreover:

Those with isolated functional deficits are not the kind of individuals who were understood to be mentally defective as that term was used in the GCA. Nor are such individuals the kind of irresponsible or dangerous persons who Congress sought to prohibit from possessing firearms under [the law].”

Now, the ATF says, some of the people banned shouldn’t have been. The new rule proposal would “make clear that individuals who present solely with isolated functional deficits, such as the inability to manage their government benefits, are not mentally defective.”

The U.S. Postal Service has also proposed a rule that would allow “people to mail handguns under the same rules as lawful rifles and shotguns after the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded earlier this year that the roughly century-old ban was unconstitutional,” per reports.

The above is part of an article by Paul Dragu. To see the entire article at TheNewAmerican.com, click here.

New Bill Would Raise Federal Minimum Wage to $25

On June 25, Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) introduced the “Living Wage for All Act,” proposing to raise the federal minimum wage from its current $7.25 per hour — unchanged since 2009 — to $25 per hour, phased in by 2032 for large employers and 2039 for small businesses. Companion legislation was introduced in the House by representatives.

This compassionate-sounding proposal is one of the most effective accelerants of automation ever devised by a legislative body, and the workers it claims to protect will bear the cost. At $7.25 an hour, a fast-food restaurant might employ four cashiers during a lunch rush. At $25 per hour, the same restaurant has a compelling business case to spend $50,000 on a self-service kiosk system that requires no wages or benefits, never calls in sick, and never files a workers’ compensation claim.

What Senator Murphy’s bill would accomplish is an artificial acceleration of a transition that is already underway. The fast-food industry did not wait for a $25 minimum wage to begin replacing human workers. Automation started when wages began rising toward $15.

McDonald’s has deployed self-ordering kiosks in locations globally, reducing staffing needs dramatically. Customers now place orders, customize meals, and pay, without interacting with a human employee. The company has simultaneously invested heavily in automated kitchen equipment designed to reduce the number of workers needed for food preparation.

Elsewhere, Amazon’s cashierless Go stores, where sensor technology tracks every item a customer picks up and automatically charges his account upon exit, have demonstrated the technical viability of fully staffless retail. Standard Cognition, AiFi, and Grabango are competing to bring the same capability to grocery chains, convenience stores, and pharmacies. Every self-checkout lane installed is one fewer cashier employed.

In this way the costs of minimum-wage legislation fall most heavily on the workers it is purported to help. Research consistently identifies the most vulnerable groups as bearing the highest displacement risk: teenagers and young workers entering the labor force for the first time; workers without high-school diplomas; workers in rural areas and small towns, where business margins are thinner; workers in the restaurant and retail industries, where automation is most rapidly advancing; and workers with disabilities — groups whose subminimum-wage protections the Murphy bill would simultaneously eliminate.

Small-business owners face a different but equally serious problem. A restaurant operating on a three-percent profit margin cannot absorb a labor cost increase of this magnitude by raising prices alone, which would drive customers away regardless. The choices available to a small-business owner facing a $25 minimum wage are: raise prices (and lose customers), reduce hours (and lose revenue), reduce staff (and automate), or close. None of these outcomes benefits the workers the legislation is reputed to help. — Rebecca Terrell

King Charles’ Multi-faith Stance

King Charles III has distanced himself from England’s Christian heritage by abandoning his title of “Defender of the Faith.” In a veiled capitulation to multiculturalism, he has instead adopted “Defender of Faith.” He gave the reason back in 1994, stating, “I personally would much rather see it as defender of faith, not the faith, because it means just one particular interpretation.”

More recently, he elaborated, “I mind about the inclusion of other people’s faiths and their freedom to worship in this country. And it’s always seemed to me that, while at the same time being Defender of the Faith, you can also be protector of faiths.”

Father Calvin Robinson, a Catholic priest and commentator, accused the king of betraying his coronation oath by shifting toward a pluralistic, multi-faith stance. He wrote, “Changing the definition from the one true Christian faith to some globalist nonsense about multi-faiths is not only treasonous, but it is also the heresy of pluralism, an act worthy of dethronement.”

Charles has also faced criticism from segments of the Christian community for not delivering a traditional Easter message, contrasting with his public greetings for Ramadan and Eid. Neil Sean, a British journalist and royal commentator, noted Christians felt “angry.” Richard Fitzwilliams called skipping an Easter message “a mistake,” especially after delivering one the prior year. While Buckingham Palace clarified that Easter messages are not annual like the Christmas broadcast, the omission fueled accusations of prioritizing other faiths.

The role of the British monarch as Supreme Head of the Church of England dates to Henry VIII’s reign in 1534. At his 2023 coronation, Charles swore to uphold the “Protestant Reformed Religion,” despite being a champion of multiculturalism and diversity, rooted in his abiding belief in globalism.

Likewise, declining Christian adherence is a mark of his nation. A 2024 Spectator article suggested Prince William is less spiritually inclined than his father or grandmother. A senior palace figure said William “does not share the King’s sense of the spiritual” and is “not instinctively comfortable in a faith environment.”

William’s potential discomfort with the Church of England could lead to a more secular monarchy. Is it possible that neither Charles nor William realizes how his stance on faith damages the monarchy’s relevance in a United Kingdom increasingly unmoored from its past and unsure of its national identity? Is it likely that Charles does not realize how divisive his calls for unity are?

Then again, “Defender of the Faith” was a title originally conferred by the pope, so “the Faith” referred to the Catholic religion. Is Charles unwittingly influenced by historical proclivity? Or is he demonstrating his devotion to separation of church and state? — Rebecca Terrell

Why Did the Left Demonize the U.S. on 250th July 4? It’s a Sales Tactic, Warns Top Historian

The reason so many powerful interests are working to demonize America, its history, and its Founding Fathers around the nation’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is simple yet brilliant. Basically, it’s a sales tactic, explained leading historian and author William Federer of American Minute in this interview on Behind the Deep State with The New American magazine’s Alex Newman.

Federer, one of the nation’s top living historians, also described the intricate relationship between Christianity and U.S. history. In short, America is and always has been a Christian nation, no matter which way you break it down, and no matter how much those who hate God and the United States may dislike it. While the situation currently looks bleak, it is never too late for a nation — with God’s help — to get back on the right path.

Listen to and share this important interview at TheNewAmerican.com. – The Editors

Report: ICE Arrests Rise as DHS Reorients Under Mullin

The number of arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surged in late June as Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin reoriented his department to take a lower-key approach.

According to a July 1 report by The New York Times, “officials have detained more than 10,000 people in the last five days,” a major increase from the agency’s earlier arrest numbers.

The Times continued:

Agency leaders in recent days ordered top ICE officials to focus more of their officers’ efforts on picking up immigrants they want to deport, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and interviews with federal officials. ICE officers have arrested people at check-ins with immigration authorities, during traffic stops and on the street. The push has apparently yielded results, with recent arrest numbers roughly doubling from the 1,000 picked up each day earlier this year.

Commenting on the Times’ report, Andrew R. Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies noted, “While 2,000 arrests per day might not seem like much compared to an illegal population that numbers in the millions, it’s a historically blistering pace.” And in a recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press release, Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis noted that the Trump administration had hired “an additional 12,000 ICE officers” who were now available to enforce U.S. immigration laws.

As we reported in the April 30, 2026 “Insider Report,” ICE arrests fell noticeably in the first weeks of 2026, raising concerns among immigration hawks that leftist, anti-ICE radicalism in Minneapolis and other cities had created a “Minneapolis Effect” with reduced arrest and deportation numbers. The most recent data indicate that the decline was temporary, and that Mullin is maintaining the DHS’s immigration-arrest and deportation efforts.

The Trump administration has taken additional immigration-enforcement actions in the last three months. According to Arthur:

By early April, a new “Mass Deportation Coalition” (MDC) had assembled, publishing a “playbook” of 21 actions the administration should take to reach a target goal of at least one million deportations per year.

Trump II has begun acting on many of those recommendations, proposing new rules to restrict illegal aliens’ access to the U.S. banking system, expanding criminal prosecutions and civil fines for immigration offenses, and placing a monetary target on the back of asylum fraudsters.

On top of those actions, the administration has reoriented the Department of Justice’s immigration courts in a pro-enforcement direction, launched a review of Mexican consulates over domestic subversion (including weaponized migration), rejected a United Nations review of the Global Compact on Migration, and launched a crackdown on immigration attorneys who perpetrate asylum fraud. Additionally, it is working to crack down on birth tourism, particularly following the U.S. Supreme Court’s unconstitutional Trump v. Barbara ruling. Trump also signed into law the Secure America Act, which increased funding for ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Mullin, who has led DHS since March 24, has been credited with “adopt[ing] a lower-profile approach to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown,” according to a Politico report.

The increased number of ICE arrests is encouraging news for protecting U.S. sovereignty and deterring mass migration. However, this and the Trump administration’s other pro-enforcement actions will merely be temporary if Congress fails to enact stronger immigration laws. Many of the federal government’s existing laws are vaguely written and explicitly delegate congressional power to the president in violation of Article I, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, explaining why presidential administrations can implement massive shifts in public policy without congressional action. Congress must reassert its power and enact watertight laws cracking down on mass migration.

Additionally, state governments must reclaim their sovereign authority over immigration. The federal government has no authority under the U.S. Constitution to engage in interior law enforcement. Instead of subserviently obeying the federal government, the states should reassert the authority they already have.

On immigration, as with virtually every other issue, following the Constitution is the solution. — Peter Rykowski

When USAID Funding Was Cut, Rap Disappeared From Billboard Charts

Beginning in late 2025, for the first time in decades, the Billboard Hot 100’s top 40 contained zero rap songs. This coincided with President Donald Trump’s budget cuts to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Journalist Ben Swann speculates that USAID had been quietly propping up culturally degenerative movements such as hip-hop.

It would certainly fit a pattern. During the Cold War, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) actively shaped arts and media to promote American soft power inside the borders of the Soviet Union.

Take the agency’s promotion of Abstract Expressionism. Through the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a CIA-funded front, the United States supported European exhibitions of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and others. Historian Frances Stonor Saunders documented how the CIA funneled resources to New York’s Museum of Modern Art and international tours, helping cement Abstract Expressionism’s dominance.

Why this tactic? Post-WWI fiat currencies lost purchasing power thanks to central banks’ dominance. As traditional stores of value weakened, anything could serve as “money.” Art became an ideal vehicle: subjective, portable, and easy to inflate in value. A canvas could be purchased quietly, assigned an astronomical price through auctions or private sales, and used to park or launder wealth. As one analysis notes, regulations in places such as Mexico caused art markets to crater when anonymous cash deals were curbed, suggesting heavy illicit flows.

In the modern period, Hunter Biden provides an example. Though he is a novice without formal art training, Biden’s works have sold for tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars through galleries such as Georges Bergès in New York. Buyers have frequently remained anonymous, leading to accusations of money laundering to the former president’s son.

Music has served similar strategic ends. In the late Cold War, Western rock penetrated the East. Rumors persist that the CIA may have influenced or promoted it as a tool of geopolitical power.

Modern efforts extend to NGOs and aid programs. According to former State Department whistleblower Mike Benz, USAID took over a lot of the activities previously assigned to the CIA in terms of promoting U.S. soft power around the world. These alleged “aid NGOs” would coordinate with groups such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundations to advance subversive cultural influences in target countries. A prominent example is the George Soros connection to the band P***y Riot in Russia. Critics there saw this as foreign-funded destabilization.

In The Republic, Plato warned that changes in musical styles could destabilize the state itself, famously stating that “when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the state always change with them.” He viewed certain rhythms and harmonies as capable of arousing base passions, softness, or frenzy, which could corrupt the soul and undermine the virtues needed for a just society, particularly among the guardian class.

Aristotle, in Politics, echoed these concerns. He acknowledged music’s educational, cathartic, and recreational, value but stressed that unregulated exposure — especially to overly exciting or lascivious melodies — could distort character and moral habits. Like Plato, he believed the state should regulate musical education to cultivate virtue, prioritizing harmonious modes that foster balance while limiting those linked to excess or vice. Both philosophers saw music not as neutral entertainment, but as a potent force that could either uphold a society or tear it down. — Rebecca Terrell

Paraguayan Senator Under Criminal Investigation for Comments Against World Cup Star

A Paraguayan senator is under criminal investigation for posting derogatory comments on social media against a member of France’s national football team, sparking an international firestorm and demonstrating the world’s blatant disregard for freedom of speech.

On Saturday, shortly after France defeated Paraguay in the World Cup, eliminating the latter from the competition, Paraguayan Senator Celeste Amarilla, a member of the left-of-center Authentic Radical Liberal Party, posted comments on Instagram attacking Kylian Mbappé, who plays on the French national football team, for being “resentful, arrogant and ugly,” and being a “colonised Cameroonian, desperately trying to pass himself off as French,” among other insulting comments.

Amarilla’s comments sparked a firestorm in France, with top government officials, including President Emmanuel Macron, condemning them. Additionally, Politico reported:

The French Football Federation announced Monday it would file a criminal complaint. “The racist comments made by Paraguayan senator Celeste Amarilla toward Kylian Mbappé are utterly vile and unacceptable,” the federation said in a statement. “These statements are criminal and condemnable. They must be prosecuted here and everywhere.”

On Tuesday, the Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed that it is investigating Amarilla’s remarks, which in France could earn her up to one year in prison and a $51,000 fine.

Amarilla’s comments may be vile and unworthy of defense, but the fact that she faces criminal prosecution simply for posting them demonstrates that true, constitutionally protected free speech — even if the speech in question is derogatory or worse — is a uniquely American principle. — Peter Rykowski

Flocking to the Algorithmic State

Flock Safety cameras surveil thousands of American communities, scanning every license plate that passes and feeding the data into a centralized, searchable private database queried by law enforcement millions of times annually.

Flock cameras operate without warrants, without probable-cause requirements, and without meaningful judicial oversight. San Jose police ran nearly four million searches of Flock data between June 2024 and June 2025. Every American who drove past a Flock camera during that period had their movements logged, stored, and made available to law enforcement without their knowledge, without a court order, and without any legal finding against them.

Errors are rampant. In March, Jacob Rockwell of Pensacola, Florida, received a red-light camera ticket, but he was out of state at the time. Someone had borrowed his vehicle and had run the light. Rockwell didn’t dispute that. His quarrel was constitutional and structural. As he told the City Council: “I am guilty by default. I’ve been convicted by a computer program.”

The camera conducts no driver verification. It photographs the vehicle, identifies the registered owner, and issues a citation. The owner is presumed guilty and must prove innocence. To do so, he must navigate an appeals process run not by any government agency but by a private company — Automated Enforcement Division of Orlando, itself owned by a foreign corporation — with no transparent criteria, no clear timeline, and no meaningful public accountability.

Rockwell told the council that Florida Statute 316.0083 “unduly shifts the burden of proof to the vehicle owner to prove my innocence, rather than the State having to prove my guilt.”

Another case is that of Hugo Parra, a San Diego man, who spent nearly a month in jail over Thanksgiving 2025, missing the holiday with his family and sharing space with murderers. A Flock camera had incorrectly linked him to a carjacking that occurred five miles away from his actual location. Cellphone data corroborated his innocence, as did other Flock cameras along his actual route. Parra and his co-defendant now seek $1.5 million each for civil-rights violations and negligence.

The Institute for Justice identified at least 24 documented cases of Flock errors since 2018 — innocent people detained at gunpoint, handcuffed in driveways, jailed for weeks — including a couple stopped with a six-week-old baby in the back seat because a Flock camera misread a single digit on their license plate. Another camera misread an “O” as “0,” and two grandparents were held at gunpoint while their three-year-old grandchild watched from the car. In another case, a camera misread a “7” as a “2,” leading police to detain an innocent man, sic a dog on him, and jail him for several hours.

Flock Safety, a private company, functions as the de facto surveillance infrastructure of American law enforcement. This is the Chinese model — not imported by force, but adopted voluntarily by municipalities seduced by the promise of cheaper policing. China’s social credit system and its network of 700 million surveillance cameras represent government-by-algorithm in its mature form: a state that tracks, scores, and controls citizens through automated systems too fast and too opaque for any individual to contest through normal legal channels. Western technocrats have watched this experiment with open admiration. The same globalist policy networks that promote digital currencies and the “circular economy” consistently point to China’s governance efficiency as a model worth emulating.

Changes in western education set the trajectory toward our current dystopia. In his 1895 book The Crowd, Gustave Le Bon identified mass education as the seed of autocracy. Observing the explosion of state-sponsored schooling across Europe, he warned that educating people in trivial matters rather than in skills useful to the economy would create “an army of malcontents.” Having been credentialed for positions that don’t exist, they become “apostles of discontent,” constituting a potential danger to the State as they incline toward revolutionary sentiment. Le Bon wrote that “the French system of education transforms the majority of those who have undergone it into enemies of society, and recruits numerous disciples for the worst forms of socialism.”

Government neutralized the threat by creating meaningless civil servant jobs to absorb these unemployable misfits. The system required higher taxes to manufacture spurious jobs, but it staved off revolution.

Economist Joseph Schumpeter, writing in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1943), refined the observation. The expansion of higher education produces “people who are used to the life of the salaried employee and who lack the aptitude for and interest in independent business enterprise.” They acquire “a vested interest in unrest,” gravitating toward labor organizing, political activism, and permanent bureaucracy, forming a dangerous class whose members “develop group attitudes and group interests” hostile to the productive economy that sustains them. Too elevated for manual work but not talented enough for genuine intellectual contribution, they become a class defined by high self-estimation and low market value.

Douglas Gairdner, in The War Against the Family, quantified what Le Bon and Schumpeter had observed: By the 1990s, roughly one-third of the Western workforce was employed in government and social services, an administrative class living off transfer payments extracted from productive workers with the ostensible purpose of “helping the poor.” A situation emerged whereby two-thirds of the population were living off one-third. The ratio has since worsened dramatically. An economy in which four-fifths of participants live off the productive fifth is not a sustainable system.

DOGE-style purges of federal workers amount to inevitable fiscal correction when a bureaucracy of blue-haired bipolars becomes too expensive to maintain. The question is: What replaces the system of licensing requirements, code enforcement, and freedom-killing bureaucracy built to employ these civil servants?

A technocrat’s answer is “the algorithm.” Cheaper than a civil servant, faster than a judge, and conveniently unaccountable to any democratic process, the algorithm is being positioned as government’s operating system upgrade. By dislodging people, our government is completing the authoritarian conquest that our Founders were deliberately trying to avoid. — Rebecca Terrell